21-Y-O Christianity Student Charged With Murdering Fiancée and Pretending It Was Suicide Will Get Mental Evaluation
Christianity student and children's minister, Charles Pittman, 21, who was charged with the murder of his 21-year-old fiancée after he allegedly tried to make her death look like a suicide, has been ordered to undergo a mental evaluation by a Tennessee judge.
The Christian Post reported last month that Pittman was suspended by his church after he was arrested for the murder his fiancée, Olivia Greenlee, who he was supposed to wed in August.
The couple were both seniors at Union University in Tennessee where Pittman was a Christian ministries major and Greenlee majored in music education. They lived separately off campus.
According to the Jackson Sun, Jackson City Court Judge Blake Anderson ordered a mental evaluation of Pittman to be completed within days at a preliminary hearing last Thursday.
"Usually those evaluations determine whether there's an insanity defense and also competency to stand trial," Pittman's defense attorney George Googe told the Sun.
Once the evaluation is completed he is expected to return to court within the next one or two months. If Pittman is found fit to stand trial a preliminary hearing will determine if there's enough evidence against him to send the case to the grand jury.
Capt. Tyreece Miller said that at 7:50 a.m. on Feb. 12, police were called to a parking lot behind Luther Hall on the Union campus. Greenlee was discovered dead in her 2001 Toyota Corolla and a gun was found inside the car. Preliminary cause of death results revealed she died from a single gunshot wound.
Miller said they discovered that the gun found inside Greenlee's car belonged to a friend of Pittman's who acknowledged it was his gun, but did not know it was taken after an investigation was launched.
Pittman was soon pegged as a person of interest in the case of his dead fiancée, and after a follow-up interview he was taken into custody. Police theorize that Pittman shot Greenlee as she sat in her car the night before she was found, then staged the scene to make it look like it was a suicide.